Bridge collapses and water main explosions focus national attention on the crumbling condition of the nation’s infrastructure. Catastrophic infrastructure failures are always a momentary spur to debate on the nation’s capital investment policies. But increasingly these negative developments...

Many politicians, gerontologists, and editorial writers have come to deplore the trend toward early retirement. This trend, which began after World War II and accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s, has led to a dramatic decline in work effort and earnings among the elderly. Opponents of early...

State and local government pension reform has become a front-burner issue in the wake of the economic crisis, which sharply reduced funded ratios for most plans. Policymakers have responded primarily by raising employee contributions for all workers and/or reducing benefits for new workers. One...

People often ask how baby boomers compare with their parents in terms of being prepared for retirement. The easiest way to answer that question is to look at the ratio of wealth to income from the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), the Federal Reserve’s comprehensive triennial survey of...

Municipal bond prices are tumbling and rates rising just as public borrowers face pressure to refinance deals cut during the financial crisis. At the same time, the funded status of public pension plans has declined, and states and localities will have to come up with more money to meet future...

States and localities account for pensions in their financial statements according to standards laid out by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). Under these standards, state and local plans generally follow an actuarial model and discount their liabilities by the long-term yield...